Page 25 of The Mare Rider of Cornwall Cove
“Hmph. I should say so. Tell the lady her apology is accepted. Furthermore, I wish it to be known that I am most valiant indeed. That miscalculation in the basement diddling that bloke when I was to be in camp polishing my boots was just a momentary clanger in an otherwise spotless military pursuit.”
“I’ll tell her.” He cocked a brow. I then told her.
“We all have clangers, your lordship,” Monique replied. Reggie lowered his nose an inch or so while dusting off his breeches.
“So we do. Carry on then.” He sniffed but remained where he was, undeterred by the gentle teasing.
“We just tease you because we love you,” I added to soften the sting of our joking. He gave me a tender smile.
“And I love you,” he replied. All jokes aside, Reg was a good friend. And yes, he was a bit like that animated dog, but there was nothing wrong with being loving and faithful. Reggie and I had spent years together with only each other and Grandpa for company.
“So this entity, describe it to me in detail,” Monique said as we returned to the problem in the asylum. I did my best to relay every detail of the paranormal encounters from last night. She nodded and hummed as she worked on threading small beads onto thin strings. Beads of black, red, green, white, and blue. When I stopped and took a sip of my lukewarm tea, she placed a necklace around my neck. “Brown is for connection to the ancestors, as I know your family’s spirits are always close. Yellow is for positive energy. Blue represents motherhood and fertility, emotional healing and tranquility.” She touched each bead as she spoke. “I’ll make one for Phil as well. Wear them until your spiritual wells are full.”
“Okay, thank you. Are they blessed beads?” I asked, lifting the necklace to inspect it closely.
“Yes. My giving them to you imbues the beads with even more energy.” She gave my cheek a pat and returned her attention to the mess spread out around her. “My ancestors didn’t put all of their notes into a fancy book as yours did.” She waved a hand at the papers and recipe cards scattered all about. “They preferred scraps and scribblings in tiny notebooks.” She rolled her eyes and gave me a tired smile. “But I’ve gotten them categorized over the years, mostly, and this Smoke Man was ringing bells. Now, first off, I want to state that my people and our beliefs are not demonic, despite what the movies like to say.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“Smart, just like your grandpa.” I blushed a little. “Many years ago, my great-aunt was called on to help with cleansing dark energy from a family. Each member, and there were seven, was showing signs of having their life force drained while sleeping.” She plucked an old recipe card from a stack perhaps four inches tall and passed it to me. The handwriting was scribbled out in dark ink and virtually unreadable. “My auntie called in her hougan—who is a Voudon male priest—that had lived well over a hundred ten years with great positive energy from Bondye still flowing through him. Together, they waited for the dark spirit to arrive in the night. It stood over the form of the man of the house, a visage of dark gray smoke that slowly shifted shape, revealing its true form when my aunt and the spirit chief showed themselves. The smoky man was a resurrected soul, brought through the door to feed on the dreams of the living, stirring up the sleeper’s darkest fears, then feasting on that dark energy. Many people have dealt with such entities. The Slavic people called them mare riders, and the smaller ones have been painted to be sitting on the chest of their victims, making breathing difficult, while it pulls up the dreamer’s worst nightmares. The fear is what it feeds on somehow. There’s not much to be found in the standard tomes. Most list them as tiny demons, but thisone is not that. And you said it spoke in a thick Slavic accent, which perhaps makes it less demonic in nature.”
“Oh shit,” I whispered, fully drawn into what Monique was telling me.
“They are not to be taken lightly, no matter their origins.” She shifted to face her stacks of cards, papers, books from our occult section, and containers of beads. “It probably entered the asylum hundreds of years ago, drawn to this realm by the suffering and agony of the inmates. Small at first, it fed and fed and fed, growing larger and more skilled at deception over the years. Then, the fiend lost its food source, but for some reason, it lingered. Perhaps just enough people visit there for it to survive, but it’s obviously ravenous.” She glanced at me through smudged glasses. “You two are lucky to have made it out of there with just a severe paranormal hangover and a nosebleed.”
“No shit,” I repeated as I tucked my thighs to my chest to think hard about all of this. “Why did it linger? I mean, once the buffet of tortured souls was closed, why didn’t it just move on?”
“Hard to say. I’m not an expert on demonology, but something must have drawn it there and keeps it on the grounds. Mayhap it was bound there by someone who invoked it from the depths. Were there any spirits there that you could speak to? Maybe one of them would have some useful insight.”
“Well, I did see several phantoms, but they all seemed skittish. Oh, I did talk to a young specter named Timmy, who was a resident there for a time. He’s the one who called the entity Smoke Man. The ghosts there helped us escape.”
“Good, good, that positive energy is what you’ll need to help drive that bastard back to the bowels of whatever hell it crawled out of.”
“Thank you. Any help you can offer is gratefully accepted.”
“I wish I could go with you, but I’m a little too old and brittle for battling with such a destructive entity.” She did haveosteoporosis, that I knew, so her accompanying us, even if she wanted to, was totally out of the question. “Youaregoing back to the hospital, I assume.”
It was not a question, just a statement of what she suspected.
“I am. I have to.” I took a moment to filter out why I was feeling all of this. “It’s part of what I am, who I am, what being a Kee is all about.” Man, I sounded just like Grandpa. Not that long ago I was pushing back on using my powers, letting the world know I had them, or even acknowledging that the spirit world existed. Funny how things change when you open yourself up to them.
“You’re a brave young man. No wonder your grandfather has such pride in you.” She gave my cheek a pat. “I’ll gather up some items and invocations that you may need. I’m sure you two will be able to cleanse that place once and for all.”
The steps behind us groaned. I glanced back expecting to see Grandpa’s thick wool booties, but Phil stood on the stairs, his sleep pants hanging low on his hips, his tee wrinkled, his blond hair flat on one side of his head.
“You’re not going back to that sanitarium, are you?” Phil asked, and my gut clenched. “Oh shit, you are. You’re going back?! Oh my God, youaregoing back! What the fuck—sorry, Monique—iswrongwith you?!”
“Time for me to go polish my rapier.” Reggie disappeared with a pop.
Man, if ever there was a time I wished I had that ability, it was right now.
Chapter Nine
“Phil, child, calm yourself,”Monique said in a firm, motherly tone.
“No, I won’t calm myself!” he snarled, coming down the rest of the stairs so fast he nearly went on his ass. I got to my feet as he stumbled down the last two steps then spun to face me, his shoulders as tight as his jaw. “I’m sorry for yelling at you, Monique, but my boyfriend is trying to kill himself, and I just can’t sit down and—”
“Philip, you need to lower your voice and listen,” Monique stated with a calm authority that hopefully would cut through some of the panic Phil was experiencing. “No one is trying to harm themselves.”
